You may have guessed it already, but I’m not your typically girly-girl. I’m not a super-outgoing person and would much rather be swinging a hammer and working on projects than going out to the mall or dinner with a group of girlfriends. Not that I don’t enjoy hanging out with friends, but I tend to gravitate toward smaller get-togethers as opposed to huge group functions. You’re more likely to see me covered in paint and sawdust than in makeup. And I’m hopeless when it comes to shopping. When I need a new outfit for something, or need accessories to go with stuff I already have, I turn to my sister for help. She’s got this amazing ability to just walk up to a rack of clothes and come away with the perfect outfit. Shoot, we live almost 4 hours apart right now and I still call her! We both head out to the same store and she finds cool stuff and describes it to me so I can find it too. Even when we were in school (and again lived 3-4 hours apart) she would go shopping “with” me. Or at the very least hop online and send me links to cute things so I had a target when I went out to the store.

My favorite time was when I needed shoes to go with the dress I was wearing to my brother-in-law’s wedding and since we were both in town at the time, she came to pick me up. I totally forgot to set my alarm and was sound asleep when she came. So I threw on some clothes, grabbed a muffin, and ran out the door. We (she) found the perfect pair of boots at the second store we tried. I had been up for just over half an hour. It gave us the whole rest of the day to hang out and talk! Had I tried to do that on my own, I would have ended up shopping and driving around for hours only to come home empty handed and in a terrible mood.

I bring this up because I voluntarily spent 6 hours a store today. But this wasn’t just any store- earlier this week I discovered an ACE Hardware whose existence was previously unknown to me. And it had this:

That is a whole aisle of drawers- drawers that contain nuts and bolts and screws and any sort of doodad you can imagine! I seriously spent 15 minutes just walking up and down this aisle opening up random boxes. And even though I couldn’t stay long that first day, I knew I’d have to come back. So I came up with an awesome project idea and spent 6 hours there this afternoon picked out the perfect pieces:

This project involves spray paint, and I’ve heard rumors of a warm spell (40s) coming this way, so I’m hoping the weather holds out so I can show you guys because seriously, this is gonna be cool!